Why the Jews Are the Canary in the Coal Mine
by J. P. Golbert
July 15, 2015 at 5:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6168/jews-canary-coal-mine ◾Even in the matter of "slavery," the Torah works toward the natural and ideal condition of each and every individual person, which is freedom. In the Torah system, if a master strikes his slave and wounds him, the slave goes free. If a master has enough food for only one, he is obligated to give it to the slave. If he has only one blanket, the slave sleeps under it, not the master. This is precisely why the Western ruling classes have always persecuted the Jews and taught ordinary gentiles to hate them, lest ordinary people learn from the Jews that they have a right to live in freedom and equality. The notion of man being "endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights" comes from Jewish Scripture, certainly not from Greek or Roman political philosophy.
◾As long as Jews are around -- militating passionately for the ideals of freedom, equality and sanctity of human life -- tyrants will never be safe. In their view, both the Jews and their seditious Bible have to be done away with utterly. For tyrants, Islam is the perfect solution, whereas Christianity claims to be fulfillment of what is set forth in the Hebrew Bible, and therefore must proclaim its validity. To Islam, the Hebrew Bible is made by man and not by Allah; it has no validity and therefore there is nothing to confront. Islam is the perfect religion for making the world safe for tyranny.
◾Ask a "progressive" what it is that they would have us "progress" toward. The response will usually be a blank stare. Is it any wonder that "progressive" Western leaders and establishment journalists consistently cave in to Islamic demands to curtail freedom and have given Islam a special status among religions? They protect it against criticism, vilify its detractors and continually serve as public relations flacks for Islam: they keep explaining that the burgeoning global jihad and its expanding horrors "have nothing to do with Islam." One could contend, with far greater justification, that the Inquisition had nothing to do with Christianity. One could claim that the Inquisition was actually anti-Christian, perpetrated by people who twisted the doctrines of Christianity. No one says such an inane and ridiculous thing, except in defense of Islam.
◾When tyrants target the Jews, the real target is everyone's freedom.
◾These schools of thought, dubbed by their followers "progressive," and by ostensibly embracing the Enlightenment, only seem to have succeeded in uprooting Western Civilization from the Biblical source of equality and freedom, as seen by increasing attempts to suppress free speech on campus, in the media and, especially in Europe, by legal prosecution.
Jews have been called the "canary in the coal mine." Miners used to take canaries into the mines with them because the canary would die from coal gas escaping into the mineshaft before the level of gas could kill the men or become explosive. When the canary stops singing, it is a warning to the men to get out of the mine. How is that an apt metaphor for the Jews? Underlying the metaphor is the realization that what happens to the Jews will befall everyone. Why should that be so? This is the subject of this essay.
PART ONE: THE ROOTS OF DEMOCRACY: THE HEBREW BIBLE
Many academics and intellectuals seem attracted to totalitarian ideologies: fascism, Communism, Che Guevara, "Cuba si, Yanqui no." There seems to be an admiration today for the "Palestinian" cause, and tireless apologetics for Islam in the face of spreading jihad. The awe and solicitude shown Iranian President Ahmadinejad when he spoke at Columbia University should cause one to wonder why the leader of a regime in which death penalties are a daily occurrence -- a regime that massacres its own people and threatens another state with genocide -- should be accorded such solicitude at a major American university.
Academics and other intellectuals are steeped in the roots of Western Civilization, whose roots originate in Greece and Rome. In the Greek republic, glorified as the wellspring of democracy, maybe two percent of the inhabitants participated and enjoyed its benefits. All the other inhabitants of the realm were beggars, slaves or nearly slaves, peasants who were one crop-failure from losing their lands to creditors and becoming debt slaves whose debts would never be paid off and would be inherited by their children. They had no say in public matters. It is much like calling Saudi Arabia a democracy because the emirs all vote. One emir, one vote. Democracy in the Greek model.
There is really not much practical difference between Roman rule and Stalinist or Nazi rule except that the Stalinists and the Nazis had better technology. There is no practical difference between Communist rule and fascist rule. Only the rhetoric and other trappings differ. Likewise, there is not much practical difference between Islamic rule and Stalinist or Nazi rule. Hence, Western intellectuals seem to be quite comfortable with jihad denial. The Catholic Church legitimated and sanctified tyranny since the Fourth Century. Over the course of the last three hundred years, however, as a result of the Enlightenment (as discussed below), it lost the ability to do that. So the forces of tyranny have lost that support. Islam is just the totalitarian religion they needed. The ceremonies and other trappings seem bizarre but it is otherwise perfect for sanctifying tyranny. In fact, it is even better than the Church ever was, for reasons that will also be discussed.
At the same time, there is a certain academic antipathy for Jewish sources, Jewish perspectives, the role and impact of Israel in history and for Judaism itself. The significance of anything the Jews ever did is to be minimized, covered up entirely, if possible, or simply ignored. Look how much was done in the ancient world, according to the academics, by the Phoenicians. In fact, there was never a people who called themselves "Phoenicians." That is what the Greeks called the people who lived along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. The "Phoenicians" were the Sidonians, the Tyrians, the Beirutis, etc, and the Israelites. In fact, King Solomon of Israel and King Hiram of Tyre merged their navies. Where the Tyrians went, they went together with the Israelites. Where the Israelites went, the Tyrians went with them.
There are two responses to that from the academics: the Bible, they will say, is unreliable as history. Their response, however, seems to be "accepted truth" that survives any number of corroborations of the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible, and any number of disproofs that have been offered attempting to show that the Hebrew Bible is not reliable history. For one example, the great pioneer of archeology, Heinrich Schliemann successfully used it as his guide for major excavations.
So their second response is to ignore it. Do not address it at all. People who sometimes come out on the side of the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible often find their careers sidelined.
Historians raised serious objections to Hitler's War Against the Jews 1933-1945 by Lucy Dawidowicz, because the name implies that the destruction of the Jews was Hitler's primary goal and not an incidental secondary aspect of the war. Academicians cannot accord the Jews that much importance. They have to point out that others died in the gas chambers, not only Jews but also Gypsies, genetically defective persons, homosexuals, trade unionists, Communists and others, designated as degenerates. Indeed they did, but the Jews were truly a special case, targeted with special attention. The Holocaust was the highly extraordinary case of an entire nation mobilized to the systematic, meticulously planned, industrialized mass murder of an entire people, down to the last baby. It entailed the commitment of massive resources to locate every Jew in every neighborhood of every city and every town and village under German occupation, round them up, and either kill them on the spot or transport them from all over Europe and North Africa to Poland to be murdered en masse, and finally to dispose of the corpses. The resources devoted to the annihilation of the Jews were the equivalent of a third front.
Dawidowicz was right. The task of annihilating the Jews took preference over the navy, even as Germany was going down to defeat. The German general staff met every week and allocated all the resources at the Reich's disposal, including every piece of rolling stock in the railway system, to specific tasks according to priorities set by the generals. The navy ran out of petroleum long before the death camps did.
The two sides of the same coin are the attraction to tyrannical government and the insistence on marginal attention, if any at all, to the Jews.
Democracy grew out of the Jewish Bible (also known as the Hebrew Bible or the Torah, which Christians call the "Old Testament.") It is a profoundly seditious document. It teaches equality, and that the natural, ideal condition of mankind is freedom. It also teaches that it is the duty of everyone in the society, especially the rulers, to protect and care for the weakest members of the society. Widows and orphans are emblematic.
Equality in Judaism derives from the common origin of humanity. Sometimes the message is delivered subtly but it comes across very clearly, for example, in the following comparison. With reference to Egyptian society, the Torah says:
It came to pass at midnight, and the Lord smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who is in the dungeon, and every firstborn animal. (Ex. 12:29)
The order is hierarchical, from top to bottom.
With reference to Israelite society, the Torah says:
You are standing this day all of you before the Lord your God: your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the stranger that is in the midst of your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water; (Deut. 29: 9-10)
The order, "from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water" is not from top to bottom. Rather, they stand before God as a social circle, from one person all the way around the circle to the one standing next to him.
Slave owners in America made much of the fact that slavery exists in the Bible. It is true, something called 'eved exists and has the essential meaning of "slave," as does its derivative, "'avdut," meaning "slavery." It is the word used to refer to slavery in Egypt, which was classic, real chattel slavery.
In the Torah system, however, the laws concerning 'avdut are vastly different from chattel slavery as it was practiced in America and still is elsewhere. "Slaves" in the Torah system are not chattel. Slaves have rights. The most striking single difference on the face of the actual text of the Hebrew Bible is the provision concerning a runaway slave. In America, the Constitution, no less, required that the slave be returned to his master in the master's home state. In Torah, the law is diametrically the opposite, right on the face of the text:
You shall not deliver a slave to his master if he seeks refuge with you from his master. [Rather,] he shall [be allowed to] reside among you, wherever he chooses within any of your cities, where it is good for him. You shall not oppress him. (Deut. 23:16-17)
There are other differences in the specific laws. In the Torah system, if a master strikes his slave and wounds him, the slave goes free. If a master has enough food for only one, he is obligated to give it to the slave. If he has only one blanket, the slave sleeps under it, not the master.
There are two general categories of slave in Torah: Hebrew slaves and Canaanite slaves.
Hebrew slaves went free at the beginning of every shmitta (Sabbatical) year. The shmitta year is every seventh year from the entry of the Israelites into the Land, not the seventh year of the slave's slavery. Furthermore, the master must give him what today is called "severance pay" to start his independent life. The Hebrew slave has the right to decide he doesn't want to be free, in which case, he remains a slave until the next shmitta year. At the beginning of the Jubilee Year (every 50th year from the entry of the Israelites into the Land), however, he cannot decide to remain a slave. He goes free by operation of law, with "severance pay."
The Canaanite slave is nearer to a chattel slave, but nevertheless possessing rights such as those above. In addition, the master is obligated to influence the Canaanite slave to convert to Judaism. If he does, his status changes to Hebrew slave and he goes free at the beginning of the next shmitta year, with "severance pay." If the master is unable to influence him to accept Judaism, then he should sell the slave. In either category, to be a slave to an Israelite master is to be on track toward freedom.
In fact, the very goal of "slavery" in Torah is freedom. This sounds absurd, oxymoronic or even Orwellian, but it is not.
People in the Torah system became slaves in several ways. Most commonly, they incurred debts that they could not pay. People who fall into those straits lived as "slaves" to families of freemen where they could observe and learn the discipline and mindset of freemen and how they manage their lives.
The goal is freedom. Slaves do not know how to be free. The Israelites had God Himself to teach them, through Moses as His spokesman. Even so, in forty years in the desert, the lesson was learned only imperfectly. Since the entry of Israel into its land, the master and his family became the teachers of the ways of freedom.
Even in the matter of "slavery," the Torah works toward the natural and ideal condition of each and every individual person, which is freedom.
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